The Sceptre of the Child - Essay Example

Child Sceptre The construction of the child sceptres in the two works, i.e., “The old nurse’s story” by Elizabeth Gaskell and “The Weir” by ConnorMcPherson move along a similar parallel track to the extent that they both function as reminders of victimized children who died through no fault of their own. While there are some similarities in the appearance of the sceptres and both of them represent innocent child victims, the purpose for which they appear is however quite different; in the former the objective is to seek revenge but in the latter, the objective is to bring peace and forgiveness. Two major issues are highlighted in both the stories, i.e., guilt and neglect. The objective behind the construction of these sceptres is to reinforce these two themes in both the stories. The sceptre of the child that materializes in “The old nurse’s story” reflects the guilt of her mother. The child is an innocent victim, who was killed because of her mother’s sin of rearing an illegitimate child. It also reflects the guilt of her aunt, who was the person responsible for her death, i.e., she was the informant of the mother’s sin of conceiving a child out of wedlock. The construction of the sceptre In “The old nurse’s story”, is thus a perpetual one; appearing every now and then over the course of many years, always during the bitter winter cold and reinforcing the guilt of the perpetrator of the crime, i.e, the aunt. The sceptre in “The Weir” appears once and even then, only indirectly because it is a voice over the telephone; hence it is not a perpetual one. But the element of guilt underlines the appearance of this sceptre as well, because this child was also an innocent victim and the mother was guilty of causing its death by being negligent; this negligence led to the accident which caused the child’s death. The first sceptre is constructed in a manner that appears to be seeking revenge for a wrongful act that was perpetrated on it years earlier by Miss Furnivall who was the cause of harm, albeit indirectly. The innocence of the child hurt badly by the blow of her grandfather’s crutch, which died out in the bitter cold for the sin of its mother, is the wrongful act that begs for retribution over the years. Each time the sceptre of the child appears, it causes more innocent victims to die by luring them out into the bitter cold, clearly suggesting that the motivation is revenge. Every time the child sceptre appears, Miss Furnivall experiences anew, the terrible pain of inflicting death on an innocent victim and feels the associated guilt because it appears the innocent child will never forgive her. The purpose for which the sceptre appears in “The Old Nurse’s story” also appears to be directed at reinforcing the guilt and associated suffering in Miss Furnivall and the words, “Alas! Alas! What is done in youth can never be undone in old age!” is a cry rent with the guilt Miss Furnivall suffers every time another innocent child becomes the victim of the sceptre. Each time, she remembers her own evil act and feels guilty about it because she remains unforgiven; she is never able to forget the past and bury the dead so she can move on with her life. In “The Weir”, the single appearance of the sceptre as a telephone voice which sounds like the dead child does not cause death or suffering, rather it establishes a friendly link between sceptre and its mother Valerie and brings comfort to her. The manner of appearance of sceptres is similar to the other story; of “people at the window, people in the attic....chilldren knocking in the wall.” (Weir 38), but the dead child herself experiences these sensations before her death. This is in contrast to the old nurse’s story where the child sceptre knocks at windows and walls and is itself a ghost. Yet, the appearance of the sceptre in “The Weir” is also geared towards reminding the mother about the accident and thereby intensifying the guilt Valerie feels at her own negligence which caused the fatal accident. The appearance of these sceptres is the external man infestation of the guilt of women who caused the death of these innocent children. It may be noted that the actual act which caused the death of the children were not the women themselves; in “The Weir”, the child died as a result of an accident and in the other story, the child died by a blow to the shoulder given by her grandfather, followed by exposure to the bitter cold. It could be argued that the women were not directly responsible for the deaths of the children, yet they were the ones held accountable and made to feel guilty. The patriarchal structure of society is thus clearly evident; since men were in charge and made the determination as to what was considered a crime and what wasn’t and who was to blame for them, they were the ones who laid down society’s rules which held the women accountable. The child is innocent but the woman is being blamed because the child is illegitimate, hence the mother is held to blame for violating society’s rules and transgressing them by having a child out of the holy bond of marriage. Miss Furnivall is being blamed because she instigated the incident by reporting her sister’s illegitimate offspring. The actual death was caused by Miss Furnivall’s father but she is the one being made to feel guilty because she was the one who brought it to the man’s attention. In a similar way, although Valerie’s child died by accident, she is blamed for it because she is the woman and should have been responsible for the child. Women who had the role of care takers and nurturers of children could not be responsible for causing the deaths of children, even indirectly and if they did, they would be made to suffer the guilt of causing such deaths as if they had committed a murder themselves, in the way Miss Furnivall and Valerie do, despite not actually performing the act of killing. The patriarchal nature of society automatically attributes the blame on the woman rather than make an assessment on the basis of the events which actually occurred. The child sceptres are also constructed in a manner that reveals the neglect of the women who were attributed blame for the incidents. In the case of the “Old Nurse’s story”, the child’s mother was held to blame, but she was also guilty of neglecting the child and its needs. For instance, in accordance with society’s rules on marriage, the woman should have married the foreigner before engaging in sexual relations with him. Furthermore, the mother tried to ignore the existence of the child by locking it away in the east wing and hiding its existence. When the child was found and the old laird erupted in a rage, the mother did not try to apologize for her crime and seek mercy for the child; rather she chose to be proud and defy her father. This only exacerbated the anger of the old father and resulted in the child’s death. The construction of the sceptre is thus geared towards highlighting the neglect of the mother and her failings, which ultimately resulted in the child’s death. This is also the case in Valerie’s story; the accident that caused her child’s death resulted out of her own neglect and this is also the reason why she feels guilty about losing her child. The bottom line is that the death of these children did not need to happen at all, but they resulted because of the neglect of the mothers. As a result, the appearance of both of these sceptres is geared towards highlighting the guilt of the mothers and underlining the fact that the deaths resulted out of their neglect. In Valerie’s story, the child sceptre does not appear at the same location where she died; rather she appears after her mother moves to a new town and into a purportedly haunted house. Moreover, the sceptre also communicates with her mother in a different way and makes its presence felt in an unusual manner; Valerie in the haunted house receives telephone calls from a young child who seems to have the voice of her daughter. The encounter with the sceptre in this instance appears to be motivated differently; i.e, towards the future rather than exacting revenge for the past, as in “The old nurse’s story”. The spirit/ghost of Valerie’s daughter in “The Weir” appears to be contacting Valerie in order to comfort her and provide her healing from the guilt she carries at her daughter’s death, which also produced a subsequent estrangement from her husband. Thus, it may be noted that both Grace in “The old Nurse’s story” and Valerie in “The Weir” are guilty of the death of little girls but while Grace is being punished by the sceptre and made to forever dwell on the past, the sceptre in “The Weir” appears to be comforting Valerie and encouraging her to heal from her guilt and look towards the future. The first similarity between the two stories is that the ghosts in both stories are little girls and they both manifest their presence in haunted houses, albeit in Valerie’s case, the ghost appears only when she moves away from the location of the original accident i.e., Dublin. In both of the stories, the child sceptres are innocent victims of mistakes made by their mothers, in Valerie’s case by failing to rescue her daughter from the accident and in the case of Grace’s niece, the mother’s sin in producing an illegitimate child. In both stories, the child sceptres appear at windows and appear to be knocking at them, begging and pleading for assistance while crying out in soundless terror; the difference is that in Valerie’s story it is when her daughter is alive that she has such experiences. An important distinction however is that in Valerie’s story, the ghosts appeared/communicated through knocking, etc. in what seemed to be her daughter’s imagination, but Grace and other people actually saw the child sceptre at the window, drawing people out into the cold. Another notable difference between the two sceptres lies in how they died; while the former child died as a result of the malicious act of another, the latter died as the result of a genuine accident. The purpose for which the first sceptre appears is retribution; but the purpose for which the latter sceptre appears is to bring consolation and comfort to her mother. While in the old nurse’s story, every appearance of the sceptre makes Grace more and more aware of her guilt and the unforgivable nature of her act; in Valerie’s story, the contact with the spirit of her daughter is poignant and touching, bringing warmth and healing to the mother and making her realize that the child’s death was an accident for which she no longer needs to continue blaming herself. In conclusion therefore, it may be noted that two significant issues underlie the construction of the sceptre in both the stories. The first is the guilt of both the parties and this guilt has been attributed to the women rather than men due to the patriarchal nature of society. Secondly, the other issue is the neglect which has caused the death of the children, and they need not really have occurred. Hence both the sceptres highlight the guilt and neglect of the two parties. References: Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. “The old Nurse’s story”, Retrieved April 20, 2010 from: http://janegs.com/Gaskell/The%20Old%20Nurses%20Story/Gaskell_The_Old_Nurses_Story.htm McPherson, Connor, 2001. “The Weir”, Nick Hern Books Read More